Please don't stop making your excellent points in your own straightforward and direct style. I know you don't mean things personally, and neither do I, it just comes across that way sometimes within this limited communication medium. (I think) we all here have the same objectives.

All the best.
Steve

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Ditto. Thanks Gerwyn -- and Kurt -- for your many contributions towards helping us all understand this complex issue.

Most of this is way beyond me but I would note that with regard with to the credentials matter and whether only people with the proper credentials should write for the CFIDS Association I would note that the many different people have written articles for their newsletters, including myself and their staff members - neither of whom have medical backgrounds. This seems appropriate to me for a patient support organization.

Didn't Kuhn say that he shuddered every time he heard the words "paradigm shift" being used in the media?

By the way, what are your qualifications with regards to medical science?

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Do you mean biomedical science?yes kuhns work is often deliberately miscontrused despite his retractions.Paragidm shift is used as though it has objective meaning when Kuhn coined as a metaphor.Khuns work ultimately gave ammunition to the anti science brigade and lead to the plethora of qualitative research which we are now submerged by.Kuns work is claimed to be an authoritative source rather than one man,s phillosophical opinion

I don't necessarily agree with Kuhn's philosophy or history of science, but pseudoscience and relativism have been around a lot longer than Kuhn. I happen to believe the antidote to positivist rationalism is pan-critical rationalism.

I did mean biomedical science. Not that this point really needs clarifying.

I don't necessarily agree with Kuhn's philosophy or history of science, but pseudoscience and relativism have been around a lot longer than Kuhn. I happen to believe the antidote to positivist rationalism is pan-critical rationalism.

I did mean biomedical science. Not that this point really needs clarifying.

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you said medical science so it appeared to need clarification
Qualitative research was virtually unknow before Kuhns work but underwent an explosion following it .Proponents claimed that Kuhns work highlighted that interptetative research was as scientifically valid as the nomoetic approach then favoured by positivistic practitioners

...This illustrates how the challenge of proving retroviral infection as the cause of CFS, and suggests that given the early mixed findings, some type of consensus process may be very important in the search for answers about XMRV in CFS.

There are good reasons to pursue the long-term goal of a formal consensus process for XMRV in CFS, even if the initial studies all seem to agree on the major findings. The use of outside experts, as in the NIH approach to consensus-building, can help give credibility to the findings...

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Kurt,

Thanks for the info on the consensus process. I don't know you as well as some posters, but my first impression is that you wrote the article to help us understand the consensus process which is probably helpful whether or not a consensus process is undertaken. You were diligent in submitting this for review to a biologist.

It seems your article was partially guided by your belief that a consensus is possible and should be pursued. This would, I'm sure, sound like a very reasonable opinion to a scientist unfamiliar with the whole 'CFS' field. I found it puzzling that you, like me, a patient and someone familiar with the 'CFS' field and politics surrounding it, could come to this conclusion and indeed write this article as though all the problems of the science and politics of "CFS" don't exist.

This is basically the general approach of CAA and I just find it bizarre and disturbing, especially in an educated fellow patient.

We are obviously under attack by considerable anti-science and anti-patient PR people and lobbyists masquerading as scientists, eg Fauci, Wessely and co-conspirators, etc. We will never have consensus because, inter alia, consensus is inconsistent with maximum insurance corporation profits and these co-conspirators maintaining a career and staying out of prison. It is frustrating to explain this to outsiders, much less an intelligent patient like you.

This may sound like to you like an ad hominem attack, but it is not malicious. Nor is it irrelevant or unwarranted in my honest opinion.